


Constantine

by moreagaara



Series: Before the Imperium [6]
Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Artificial Intelligence, Before the Imperium, Blood Magic, Cross-Post, Cross-Posted on deviantArt, Custodian Creation, Experimentation, Fanfiction, Gen, Human Experimentation, Human Improved, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Literature, Medical Experimentation, Originally Posted Elsewhere, Originally Posted on deviantART, Rape Aftermath, Science Experiments, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Super Soldier Serum, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 19:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreagaara/pseuds/moreagaara
Summary: So!  I present you now with my take on how custodes were originally created--blood magic and lots of it.  In all fairness, the actual lore doesn't detail how custodes were/are made, just that it's a hell of a lot more complex than space marine creation, requires you to start with a baby of 4 years or less, and the baby cannot be a psyker.  I have chosen to interpret this, given how my version of the Emperor is a blood mage, as the Emperor using a metric fuckload of blood magic to make them.  This also means that the baby could potentially be a latent psyker and have the abilities "wake up" later in life after they were done turning into a custode--if it happened during their being transformed, they would probably die on account of a magical immune response.Also, in the Dark Age of Technology, AI were fucking everywhere, and we all know for a fact that the Emperor definitely had at least one.  Robot uprising probably happened because humans were shits and didn't treat the AI like people (as I have made the Emperor do here).  I also decided to make Malcador slightly cooler by having him be the guy to have invented AI, in essence; there is no evidence of this being the case in the actual canon, but fuck it, right?  Also this piece means that Vicky is definitely still kicking around in the Palace somewhere, and I do in fact have another piece that address how the Emperor's being enthroned changes custode creation.Peep ownership:WH40k and related:  Game Workshop (this includes Constantin(e) Valdor)Me:  the writing, Vicky, and the Emperor's name





	Constantine

**Author's Note:**

> So! I present you now with my take on how custodes were originally created--blood magic and lots of it. In all fairness, the actual lore doesn't detail how custodes were/are made, just that it's a hell of a lot more complex than space marine creation, requires you to start with a baby of 4 years or less, and the baby cannot be a psyker. I have chosen to interpret this, given how my version of the Emperor is a blood mage, as the Emperor using a metric fuckload of blood magic to make them. This also means that the baby could potentially be a latent psyker and have the abilities "wake up" later in life after they were done turning into a custode--if it happened during their being transformed, they would probably die on account of a magical immune response.
> 
> Also, in the Dark Age of Technology, AI were fucking everywhere, and we all know for a fact that the Emperor definitely had at least one. Robot uprising probably happened because humans were shits and didn't treat the AI like people (as I have made the Emperor do here). I also decided to make Malcador slightly cooler by having him be the guy to have invented AI, in essence; there is no evidence of this being the case in the actual canon, but fuck it, right? Also this piece means that Vicky is definitely still kicking around in the Palace somewhere, and I do in fact have another piece that address how the Emperor's being enthroned changes custode creation.
> 
> Peep ownership:  
WH40k and related: Game Workshop (this includes Constantin(e) Valdor)  
Me: the writing, Vicky, and the Emperor's name

Daenus laid back on his operating table, prepared to slice into himself for more modifications. Two hearts had certainly improved his life—his control over his magic was better than ever, he could physically push himself further than ever, and the second heart had saved his life recently when his first had given out—but he wondered if perhaps a third would be better still. He positioned the mirror over his body where he could easily look and see what he was doing, and grabbed his table full of surgical equipment to pull it closer. His computer system—upgraded with the latest AI—beeped angrily at him.

“It’s for science, dammit!” he yelled in response.

“Pushing the boundaries of science is best done in a controlled setting—” the AI began with a disapproving tone.

“Put a sock in it, Vicky. You know full well I’m a doctor and a blood mage, and that I know what I’m doing by now,” he cut the AI off; its full designation was V1-K1-NDY, but he had taken to calling her Vicky as it was faster. He also rather suspected she—Vicky was definitely a she—rather liked having a proper name and being treated like a person. She still made an irritated noise at him, which he ignored.

He had set the scalpel to his skin when she interrupted again. “Visitor approaching,” she informed him with a pleased chime. Now he had to stop his experimenting.

“You know Vicky, sometimes I swear you summon people here for the sole purpose of stopping me from experimenting…” Daenus sighed, but got off the table to watch the cameras guarding the front entrance to his mountain home and laboratory. The visitor approaching wasn’t anyone he was expecting; Malcador was currently studying with the monks further up the Himalayas about some topic or other, and most of his doctoral contacts were busy with their own work. And yet, a woman carrying something was approaching his door.

Daenus watched her through the cameras for a while; when she finally reached the door, she didn’t knock or do anything to request entrance. Instead, she set her bundle down in front of her door and turned to go. He was about to sigh, thinking it was another offering package from some devout holdouts of Hinduism, when the package stirred. “Vicky, keep her nearby,” he ordered tersely as he bolted up to his front door, pulling on the first shirt he had to hand—an ugly sweater his son had made for him. It should have been too warm for the climate, but Malcador had thoughtfully knitted it out of materials that adjusted how much heat they held depending on the weather, and so it was perfectly comfortable.

The door to his mountain home slid open, and Daenus gently scooped up the baby his almost-visitor had abandoned; it was already crying, so he took a little time to calm it. The child’s mother was attempting to get around a robotic wolf Vicky had deployed, so he called out to her. “Hey.”

She spun around; there were tears on her face. “I can’t keep him, I can’t, please don’t make me—” she said in Hindi, holding up her hands to stop his approach. Daenus held up a hand of his own in a gesture intended to be calming, shifting his hold of the infant—it couldn’t be more than a few months old—so that he cradled it in one oversized arm.

“It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” he told the woman in the same language. She still breathed much too hard and was nearly frozen in fear. He was starting to understand what must have happened to her, and shifted his gaze so he was looking just over her head rather than directly at her. “I’ll take your little one in too, just…I’d like to know why.”

She just shook her head and backed up another step. “I can’t,” she replied. “I can’t tell you,” her voice was almost a whisper.

Daenus dropped his gaze from her entirely. “…all right,” he replied. There was only one explanation. “If you like…there’s a village of entirely women up the mountain about a dozen miles that way,” he pointed a small game trail out to her. “In case you don’t think you can bear to go home.” She shivered, one eye on the robotic wolf behind her.

It considered, then trotted past her to return to its charging station inside. The woman fled up the game trail he’d indicated, and Daenus turned back into his mountain. Once he was inside, and the door was shut behind him, he settled in one of his favorite recliners near a fireplace—a real one that made Vicky nervous whenever it was lit.

“Vicky?” he called after a while, the child in his arms starting to make hungry noises. “I’m going to need baby formula.”

“I am currently obtaining everything you will need to care for a child, sir,” she told him in her most respectful tone. “Would you like the baby formula to be based off the recipe you have saved or the standard?”

“Saved recipe, please. And while you’re at it…ping Malcador for me. The short version is fine,” he replied. Vicky made a noise of acknowledgement; it took her about two minutes to fabricate some baby formula for him. Daenus himself was just pleased that he still remembered how to care for such a small infant.

~~*~~

Malcador arrived within the hour. “You weren’t kidding,” he said, seeing Daenus with the newly washed infant in his arms. “She just left it with you? Just like that?” he offered to hold the child so Daenus’s arms could get some rest; Daenus gratefully transferred the sleeping baby over to his son, and was thankful the child remained asleep.

“She was terrified to be around me, to boot,” Daenus elaborated a little more. “She didn’t want anything to do with it, and the second she heard about an all-female village just up the mountain, she took off.”

Malcador looked grim. “Maybe you should’ve offered to track whoever hurt her down,” he told his father, who was shaking his head.

“She wouldn’t even confirm what had happened. It’s possible that she was close to whoever…it was. Probably killing the bastard wouldn’t have helped,” Daenus sighed, looking at the collection of baby things he’d gotten out of storage; Malcador followed his gaze, and let out a small laugh. They had been his things, once.

“So I guess I have a little brother now,” he shrugged. “What are we going to name him?”

“Uh.” In truth, Daenus had no idea. Malcador’s own name had just come to him out of thin air after weeks of thinking about it and scores of suggestions Aasmi had refused. “I was more worried about the whole…death thing, to be perfectly honest.”

Malcador let out a tense breath; unfortunately, the child chose that moment to wake up, and was rightly frightened by the face of the old stranger now holding it. It wailed, and quieted only after Malcador had given it back. “That…yeah,” Malcador shook his head. He knew how deeply affected his mother’s death had affected Daenus, and he had only been around for one of them. “I’m not one for…experimenting on children, but…”

“Absolutely not,” Vicky chimed in. “Experimenting on non-consenting individuals is prohibited by international law, and even in such cases where the parents give permission—” 

“Vicky.” Daenus’s voice was iron. “I don’t mean to be rude. But if you say. One. More. Fucking. Word. I will box your ass up and send you to Ceres.” The child was crying again, having sensed his anger; Malcador took him back and conjured a small witchlight, which the baby immediately grabbed at and shook, so Malcador had it make a pleasant jingle, much to the baby’s delight. “I _know _international law. I _know _why that law was created!” Daenus kept his voice tightly controlled, but even Malcador moved to the other side of the room in case his father snapped and lashed out.

Fortunately Daenus did no such thing; instead, he took several deep breaths and recentered himself. “I am also well aware of the consequences of breaking international law, especially a law like this one. However,” he stated in a much calmer tone. “It appears that you are not aware of what happens when someone about whom I care deeply dies. Whether that person is my brother, my wife…or my adopted son. To put it simply, there exist levels of hell deeper than those described in Dante’s _Inferno_, and I have experienced them. If you were of an intelligent bent, Vicky…you would pray that you do not witness them.”

There was dead silence for several seconds, broken only by the child’s shaking of Malcador’s solidified witchlight, and the resulting gentle ringing. “Yes sir,” was all Vicky eventually said.

“Good. Now, since I’m certain that you’re even now planning to collect evidence of my experimenting and forward them to the international committee that deals with crimes of this nature…” Vicky protested weakly, but to no effect. “…I would just like to inform you that it takes time for the committee to receive and process any messages, and that I am a lot closer than they are. I can make decisions a lot faster…and I know how to create blood portals to anywhere in the world. Including active volcanoes. Basically what I’m saying, Vicky darling, is that Ceres will seem like paradise compared to what I will do to you should I find out you’ve told anyone about this.”

Malcador chimed in. “And while we’re on the subject, I can see to it that your messages are never read. I helped write the core programming of most AIs,” he informed her. “And I know it’s hard for you to not think in terms of strict black and white, but this is an extreme grey area. If we do nothing, Daenus and I will both outlive the little one here, and Daenus has already lived through…too much death of his close family. He would be too badly hurt by the eventual death of the little one, even with life extensions and all that great stuff.”

“Current calculations indicate that Daenus will die several decades before the little one,” Vicky protested. Daenus couldn’t help himself; he started laughing and had to sink into his recliner before he fell over.

“Vicky…Vicky, how old do you think I am?” he finally asked once he was able to calm himself.

“Approximately two hundred years old,” Vicky stated with confidence.

“And, um, how did you come to that estimate?” Malcador asked politely over Daenus’s resumed helpless laughter.

“…Daenus appeared to be approximately thirty when I was purchased, and he has used life-extension therapies six times since then. Given the degradation in effectiveness of those therapies, combined with his recent heart attack, he should be approximately two hundred years old, and has approximately twenty years left of healthy life,” Vicky eventually stated, disgruntled that Malcador didn’t trust her calculations. “Sir, I do not appreciate being laughed at after you threaten me!”

Daenus still couldn’t manage to speak, so Malcador continued for him, while eyeing his father. “And…have you been informed that Daenus is a blood mage, and all that that entails?” _A heart attack? Really? _he mouthed at his father in Sumerian. 

“I have been informed that Daenus is a blood mage and have records of him healing from normally lethal wounds,” Vicky replied slowly.

“Ah. So then you don’t know that blood mages are immortal, and typically do not age,” Malcador replied. He would have to ask Daenus about the heart attack later, after his giggles had vanished.

Had Vicky a robotic body and been holding something, she would have dropped whatever she held. “That is impossible,” she sputtered. “Standard human biology—I have records—even powerful psychic talents do not allow for—” she was making increasingly upset robotic noises.

“What he means to tell you, Vicky, is that I was born in…about 10,000 BCE?” Daenus had managed to master his laughter again. “And it’ll take way the fuck more than anything you could think of to kill me. Hell, I could probably stand at the epicenter of a nuclear blast and walk away unharmed,” he told her.

Vicky could only make the noise that indicated she had encountered a fatal processing error. Malcador sighed, handed the child back to his father, and manually had her restart herself. “Please don’t actually do the nuclear thing, by the way,” he asked Daenus. “Also, a heart attack?”

“I have no plans of playing with nuclear fire within the next few thousand years,” Daenus assured his son. “Also yes, I learned the hard way that I need to eat less bacon and eggs. It was a very sad day, and I have to say, I did not plan to test out my second heart quite that strenuously so soon after implanting it.”

“That…that just raises further questions!” Malcador threw his hands in the air in frustration. Daenus let him rant for a while in Tibetan, choosing instead to focus on the small child, who was now watching the proceedings with interest. “I hope you kept notes,” Malcador finally returned to his native language of Hindi.

“I did,” Daenus assured him, calling up the files with a wrist-mounted computer that had long been rendered obsolete by AI. Malcador settled in to read them while Daenus played with the child. “What about Constantine?” he eventually suggested.

“The Roman emperor or that one movie?” Malcador asked without looking up from his reading.

“I was thinking the emperor, but I did like the movie too, so…” Daenus shrugged.

Malcador thought for a while. “Works for me.”

~~*~~

The first step was to imbue the child with immortality. As much as all three of them wanted to avoid it, Daenus and Malcador had had to use Vicky’s immense processing power to simulate various methods of bestowing immortality; in the end, they had settled upon immersing Constantine in a bath of Daenus’s flowing blood while Malcador called down the spells that would bind the immortality and agelessness of blood magic into the infant, and nothing else.

The problem was that the ritual would fail if Constantine had the slightest hint of chaotic taint within him. Malcador suspected that wouldn’t be a problem with so young a child—Constantine hadn’t even developed much of a personality yet—but Daenus had wanted to be sure, and so had devised a test: a few drops of Constantine’s blood would be mixed with a vial of Daenus’s. If there was no taint of chaos, the mixture would remain naturally red; if there was even a slight taint, however, the mixture would turn black, and Daenus would see to it that Constantine found his way to some other family more capable of loving him.

The mixture remained pure, but the ritual caused Constantine so much distress that Daenus had waited months—during which he did everything in his power to calm his adopted son and reassure him that everything was fine, that Daenus would never hurt him—before attempting anything else.

The next step had been Malcador’s idea; he told his father that he occasionally felt small as a result of all his father’s self-experimentation, and didn’t want Constantine to feel that way, and so he should be made to grow as tall and strong as Daenus. That would also give Daenus a ‘playmate’ he could use his full strength against without having to worry about accidentally killing them. Daenus had hesitated, but agreed when Vicky expressed guarded approval of the idea. Again they had turned to her immense processing power to determine how best to proceed without accidentally killing Constantine.

In the end, they had turned again to blood magic. This time, Malcador simply used Daenus’s blood in Constantine’s bath, while singing the appropriate spells to convince the child’s tiny body that it was meant to grow nine feet tall, with the appropriate skeletomuscular mass for normal health at that size, along with increased mass to bring his eventual strength up to par with Daenus’s. Once again, Constantine had not liked the process, though he was much less upset by this, and Daenus had insisted on waiting a full year before attempting anything else.

They had eventually waited a year and a half, as it had become difficult to keep Constantine well-fed; the ritual they had devised had turned his appetite voracious. It had been Daenus who had experimented with including microscopic flecks of a ceramic-metal alloy he’d devised; the alloy was similar enough to calcium that it would naturally be used by Constantine’s body to build his bones and teeth.

Vicky had suggested in an off-handed way that it would be nice to have someone around who could remember things half as well as she could, but she would accept someone who could remember things as well as Daenus. Likely she meant that as an insult, but Daenus and Malcador had looked at each other and agreed that Constantine would need a more capable brain, if for no other reason than to deal with the rigors of potentially thousands of years of life. This in turn had led to their third experiment, which had nearly killed Constantine.

Daenus and Malcador had scanned their own brains and compared them to the brains of millions of other, more normal humans across the globe, and located structures they possessed that no one else did. Malcador had taken to Vicky once again to test what each structure did, once implanted in an otherwise normal human brain. Thus they had discovered the structures which allowed for the use of magic generally, and blood magic specifically, along with the structures which had allowed Malcador to breeze through his university coursework without ever needing to study or take notes. These last they copied and surgically implanted into Constantine’s three-year-old brain.

Both Daenus and Malcador had used the full force of their blood magic to keep the child alive after his brain fought to reject the foreign tissue, though Malcador had eventually collapsed as a result of his neck brace closing off his magic entirely. Yet Constantine lived, and his shocked systems had been carefully convinced that the new structure was normal and necessary. Afterwards, Constantine had refused to be parted from Daenus for more than a few minutes at a time, convinced that if he couldn’t see his adoptive father, he would quickly die.

It took two years to convince him otherwise, and by then, he had become distressed that he could not sense the world as clearly as Daenus and Malcador could. Daenus, ever concerned for his son, spent much of that time working to improve his natural ability to sense the world. Once again they had turned to blood magic, Malcador being unwilling to attempt another brain surgery, especially so soon after the near-failure of the last attempt. They had then staggered each ritual out, so that each sense was augmented to what Vicky considered to be hyper-sensitivity over a period of three years.

Yet, after that period, Constantine was happy to be able to operate at the same level as his parents; he could learn and remember almost as quickly as Vicky, who refused to admit pleasure at having someone who could truly keep up with her, and at eight years old, he was as strong as an adult man. Still, he tired easily, and Malcador suggested that had to do with his heart not being able to pump enough blood to keep his system fully active. Daenus, having invented the dual-heart procedure, insisted on being the one to carry it out, though it was Malcador who designed the cells which would grow into the second heart Constantine clearly required.

The second heart helped, but when he still tired more easily than his fathers, Vicky suggested that his lack of stamina had to do with his blood’s efficiency at carrying nutrients and oxygen, rather than a simple lack of blood pressure. Daenus had never noticed anything lacking in his own physique likely because he was subconsciously improving his blood’s capacity as the changes he made in his own body required. Malcador had originally suggested a metallic implant for this purpose, but Daenus had insisted on a biologic process.

And so, once again, they had turned to blood magic. Daenus made small, bone-deep incisions into Constantine, and applied his own blood to them; the mixed blood would serve as a new template for how Constantine’s own body should create new blood cells. Gradually, over several months, Constantine’s unnatural fatigue had vanished.

Yet the incisions showed another frightening—in Daenus’s mind—lack: Constantine could not heal himself nearly as quickly as either Malcador or Daenus, but only as fast as any normal man. They had argued as to which aspects of improved healing Constantine might need—with Vicky proving a stubborn holdout in being able to regrow limbs—and in the end had settled on almost immediately forming scar tissue at the site of an injury. This time Malcador had donated samples of his blood for Constantine’s body to use as a template, and Daenus did everything in his power to ensure that no stray taint of Malcador’s brush with chaos made it into their son.

Constantine was twelve by the time they completed all their changes, and all Daenus’s efforts to calm him, to reassure him that all would be well and he would heal from all that they had done to him, had instilled a level of loyalty that went deeper than anything Vicky had records of. She accused Daenus of brainwashing the child; he insisted that he had only kept his son mentally well, and that to not do as he had done would have driven Constantine insane. Malcador had intervened in Daenus shattering Vicky’s motherboard, mostly by agreeing that while what Daenus had done was technically brainwashing, it had been necessary, which he proved to Vicky by having her run simulations on what would have happened had Daenus not acted as he did. All ended in Constantine wildly attempting to rip himself apart to resume normal function, after having destroyed everything around him. Afterwards, she had agreed to maintain her silence as to what they had done.

By the time Constantine was eighteen, he was able to keep up with Daenus in nearly everything they did, and his favorite pastime was sparring with his adoptive father. Thus he learned everything Daenus himself knew about warfare and battle, and had eventually begun begging for Malcador to join their games. Malcador had eventually given up and explained that he wasn’t strong enough to compete with either of them physically, and was now too old to become so—truthfully, he suspected any attempts to change his body would have triggered a negative reaction from Tzeentch, who would have seized on the opportunity to make changes of his own, which his neck brace would not be able to override. He did, however, agree to teach Constantine his own way of fighting, and Constantine quickly grew to adore the extended games of ‘tag’, or games in which either Malcador or Constantine would attempt to tag Daenus, while the other would attempt to stop them.

Vicky did everything in her power to preserve Constantine’s love for learning things other than battle, which had succeeded mostly after Daenus had shown his own love for knowledge of pop culture, history, philosophy, and other esoteric and (Constantine had once said) mostly useless knowledge. In the end, even Vicky agreed that Daenus had managed to improve Constantine to a point where even she hoped all humanity could one day hope to match him; she had made note of only one major downside:

Constantine could have no children of his own.

~~*~~

_Late in the 23rd millennium, after the conclusion of the war against AI, Vicky was the last remaining true AI existing in the entirety of the human-settled galaxy. She was terrified that Daenus would have her destroyed, in compliance with the new law against her kind. Instead, Daenus had presented a shattered copy of her motherboard to the committee in charge of this matter; the copy had never contained Vicky’s intelligence, but because it was of the correct make and model, and because it was so badly damaged that no one could scan its remains to be certain of what he had done, they had trusted his word._

_Meanwhile, Daenus had transferred her being onto a different motherboard which could not be tracked by anyone; it too had been designed by Malcador, and Vicky’s original motherboard had been tossed into a volcano. It took years for her to pluck up the courage to ask them why they had done this._

_“You bent your own rule about obeying the laws once. So now we’re bending ours. You just have to be very careful from here on out, and pretend ignorance and stupidity whenever anyone good enough with computers comes by to use you.”_

_And Vicky complied._


End file.
